A little background helps set the context for this observation. As its home page introduces it, APEX

“is a rapid web application develoment tool for the Oracle database. Using only a web browser and limited programming experience, you can develop and deploy professional applications that are both fast and secure. Oracle APEX is a fully-supported, no-cost option of the Oracle database.”

“Fully-supported” here is a serious claim: Oracle provides extensive documentation, including references, tutorials, and more, for APEX. Oracle also lays out plans for the product; the up-coming 4.2 release, for example, provides for declarative specification of RESTful database-backed Web services, access to HTML5 charting, and new facilities to promote deployment and mobile service.

Most interesting about APEX, though, is all the evidence for its expansion outside Oracle. Each year in June, the independent Oracle Development Tools Users Group (ODTUG) sponsors a Kscope conference to promote communication between developers reliant on Oracle. As Oracle ACE Director Dimitri Gielis mentioned at the most recent Kscope in San Antonio, the first Interest Group meetings for APEX could be hosted easily at a local restaurant; now, though, over two hundred people attend.

That’s not all: APEX has its own Linkedin Group and Skill, hundreds of recruiters rely on it as an employment keyword, and there are numerous local users groups or interest groups around the world.

You’ll want to know of all these resources when tackling application performance management (APM) questions, because APEX APM is a vast subject. Among them all, Kscope is the best concentration of talent ready to share ideas and issues.

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